Max Forward Broke My Heart

Well, crap.

I've been toying with the idea of self-publishing thru Lulu.com. As part of those plans, I've wanted to hire a professional illustrator. I was searching Craigslist.org and found someone that seemed ideal: Max Forward. His work is reasonably priced. He draws well, and the women he creates are very sexy. He even does some nudity. He works in an electronic format which makes working over the internet ideal. Even his name breathed cool. I mean, really, Max Forward is just about the awesomest name ever. With high hopes, I contacted him with the basics of my project and asked for a quote.

I was shocked and more than a little disappointed when he expressed discomfort with the subject matter and declined to provide a quote.

In the larger scheme of things, I suppose I'm not surprised. I commonly swim with ideas that makes the public at large squirm, or at least giggle in discomfort. In my own family, my sister kept me away from her children for years and implied to our siblings that their own children weren't safe around me based on nothing more than crude prejudice. I've even had problems at more than one job based solely on small minded people not being able to wrap their head around my personal life.

I'll find another illustrator that *will* work with me. But still, I'm mourning for the lost fusion of Max Forward's art and my writing. I feel a hole in me where the synergy we could have created was supposed to go. I think he would have been proud of the resut if we had worked together. Luckily for me, I'll find someone else that will fill that hole.

Too bad for Max. He is the real loser here.